


open up again (i believe in second chances)

by iphigenias



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Era, Episode Tag: Points, Fic for Victory 2k15, M/M, Mutual Pining, Self-Doubt, 中文翻译 | Translation in Chinese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 14:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3899002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphigenias/pseuds/iphigenias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick watches the mountains, his eyes tracking the rainbow of wildflowers and the path of the sun in the cloudless sky; Nix watches Dick, watches the man he’s been in love with for almost three years now, and thinks that he would trade all the wildflowers in the world for even the slightest possibility that Dick might love him in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	open up again (i believe in second chances)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Issay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Issay/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [Open Up Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3967663) by [CnE4ever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CnE4ever/pseuds/CnE4ever)



> HAPPY V-E DAY YOU NERDS! 
> 
> **Issay's prompt: Winters/Nixon, Austria, Lew doubts he's good enough for Dick.**
> 
> sorry it isn't longer, sweetheart, but i'm best at short fics. hope it's what you wanted :)
> 
> title from _second chances_ by imagine dragons, which is basically the most perfect winnix song ever. beta'd by marnie. this is based upon the hbo portrayals of easy company and not the real men; no disrespect is intended.
> 
> **EDIT 19/05/15:** this edit now has a beautiful chinese translation! link above.

It’s a funny thing, Nix thinks, for men to wear their names like badges of honour. Like a jumble of letters on a page is something to be proud of. The name Nix wears and has worn for every day of his life is heavy, and suffocating, and shameful.

The name Nix wears is a noose, and it’s choking him.

 

 

 

 

Nix has been to Austria before, but the air never tasted as sweet as it does now, tinged with victory. He didn’t think it was possible for so many wildflowers to be in bloom, all at once; for the grass to be so green, as clichéd as it sounds, on the other side. It’s like something out of a painting, one of those watercolour ones his mother used to hang around the house to intimidate their esteemed guests, except the colours here are brightened tenfold, and this landscape comes free of manicured nails and perfumed victory curls.

Austria, Nix thinks idly as he pours himself a half-glass of whiskey, is beautiful. _Europe_ is beautiful, when it isn’t being torn to shreds by artillery fire and grenades. _Should’ve been born earlier, Nix_ , his memory so unhelpfully provides. He should’ve been a lot of things he never was. A good son, a good soldier, a good friend.

Nix drains his glass. There’s a knock on the door.

“Am I interrupting?” Dick says in that soft voice of his, stepping out onto the balcony. _Never,_ Nix thinks, swallowing and still tasting the whiskey on his tongue. _The only time I hate being interrupted is when I’m with you._

“Don’t mind me,” is all he says, turning his back on the beauty of Berchtesgaden to face the beauty of Lancaster County. “Just enjoying the view.”

“It’s a good view,” Dick agrees, not taking his eyes off Nix, who shifts uncomfortably and looks away. “Reminds me of home, a little bit.”

“Oh yeah?” Nix asks, for whom the word _home_ conjures up motorcars and petrol fumes and the monotonous sounds of his father’s factories. “Didn’t realise Pennsylvania looked like this in the springtime.”

Dick laughs. “It doesn’t. Not—not exactly. It’s more a feeling, I guess.” He wanders forward to rest his elbows on the railing, and looks out across the mountains. “When I was a kid, in the summertime it was…hot. But a dry heat, you know? And the grass would be this high—” he sweeps his hands over his thighs, and Nix has to look away. “I used to run through it for _hours_ at a time. Made me feel—I don’t know.”

Nix swallows again. He imagines a young Richard Winters, pale as the moon with a mop of hair the colour of glowing embers, tearing through a field like wildfire. The thought makes him smile. “Free?”

Dick huffs out another laugh. “Yeah. That’s—exactly. _Free_. And I don’t know, but—but this place makes me feel the same way. It’s a chance to just _breathe_. We haven’t had many of those.”

It’s Nix’s turn to laugh, now, and he hates the way that it sounds: rough, grating, less like an army officer and more like the old drunk he’s liable to become one day soon. “Doesn’t feel much like a war, huh?”

“No, it doesn’t.” They fall into an easy silence, and Nix’s heart feels heavy, as though it’s weighed down like an opened parachute. Dick watches the mountains, his eyes tracking the rainbow of wildflowers and the path of the sun in the cloudless sky; Nix watches Dick, watches the man he’s been in love with for almost three years now, and thinks that he would trade all the wildflowers in the world for even the slightest possibility that Dick might love him in return.

 

 

 

 

“I’m going to the Pacific, Nix,” Dick tells him the next day, and Nix closes his eyes against the brilliance that is his best friend and thinks _of course, of course you are._ “I can’t just sit around drinking whiskey and pretending the war’s over when it’s not. When I can still do my bit.”

Nix swallows around the sudden obstruction in his throat. “You don’t drink whiskey,” he says, but his voice is hollow, and the joke falls flat. Dick doesn’t say anything else and instead just stands there, head tilted to the side like a goddamn puppy, eyes fixed on Nix as he waits for a proper answer. _As if he doesn’t already know what I’m going to say_ , Nix thinks, and sighs. “Guess this means no Vat-69 for a while, then.”

“Nix, you don’t—”

“Shut it, Dick. You’ve gotta know there’s no way I’m letting you walk into that hellhole alone.” Dick’s eyes are still wide, and he looks so goddamn _thankful_ , Nix already feels the guilt clawing away at his heart. He’s not doing this for Dick. He’s too selfish for that. Nix will deny it to his dying day, but when it comes down to the crux of it he’s his father’s son, and his father was, above all else, a coward. Nix isn’t doing this because he doesn’t want Dick to go it alone. Nix is doing it because he, himself, can’t be alone. There is no Lewis Nixon without Richard Winters, not anymore. He’d follow Dick through the Gates of Hell if that’s what it took to stay by his side, and it wouldn’t be for any of that self-sacrificial bullshit, either.

Of course, he doesn’t say any of this aloud. Dick is still looking at him like he’s something _special_ , something worth treasuring, and Nix would correct him if the latter wasn’t always so goddamn stubborn about it. “Can’t have you getting lost on your way there, can we?” are the words he finally forces out of his mouth with his too-heavy tongue. He looks away again before he can catch a glimpse of Dick’s smile, because that smile is gentle and sweet and debilitating, and Nix doesn’t deserve an inch of it.

_That smile could end wars all on its own_ , Nix thinks, and wishes he could keep it a secret, forever.

 

 

 

 

They turn Dick down and Nix tries not to feel relieved. He knows Dick wanted to go, knows he wanted to help save the world, but Nix has seen the footage of Iwo Jima, and also knows that if they had left for the Pacific, neither one of them would have returned.

Nix isn’t afraid of dying. In some ways, dying would be easier. Easier than having to write those letters home to grieving mothers and widows, saying that their sons died as heroes when really they were blown to bits without an ounce of heroism in any of them. Easier than walking through that camp and trying not to breathe for the smell, weighed down by the guilt of chance and the privilege he was lucky enough to be born with. No, Nix isn’t afraid of dying. What he _is_ afraid of is this:

A gunshot in the distance. His helmet, flying from his head. Falling to the ground with Dick’s panicked shout of his name. _I’m okay, I’m okay_ , he remembers saying, clutching onto Dick like a lifeline. _Am I okay?_

What Nix is afraid of is the look on Dick’s face that day; the look _he’d_ put there. The look that said, _oh, oh God, please, God no._ The look of a desperate man that Nix saw every time he looked in a mirror. He didn’t want to see that look on Dick. It would destroy the both of them.

(Nix doesn’t dwell on the other, equally as likely possibility. He can’t. Only in fleeting moments, right before he falls asleep, does the thought flicker through his mind. He sees a body lying in the long Lancaster grass; hair the colour of glowing embers and skin even paler than the moon. Something that looks like blood that is too red to be anything else. It is a thought that Nix pushes far away into the darkest recesses of his mind, but one which always resurfaces, filling him with dreadful _possibility_. He doesn’t sleep well, those nights.)

So when they turn Dick down, Nix tries not to feel relieved, but he’s never been good at lying to himself.

“What now?” he asks Dick, as they sit side-by-side on the stone steps of Hitler’s Nest. Dick doesn’t answer for a long while. He’s staring out across the lake, across the mountains, maybe even across the whole continent to where the Pacific looms. The sun shines from behind him and casts a halo around his head, making the hair that’s already the colour of firelight dance, almost like real flames.

_He is ethereal_ , Nix realises, and ignores the fluttering in his chest. _He is ethereal, he is other-worldly, and he will never be mine._

“I don’t know,” Dick finally answers, and Nix struggles to remember the question he asked. “I don’t know what to do anymore, I just—don’t.” He tilts his head to look at Nix, and Nix can’t look away. “Is this how you feel all the time?” he teases, and Nix rolls his eyes.

“Don’t push your luck, buddy. Get anymore cheek from you and you can forget about that interview I promised.”

“The interview for Nixon Nitration,” Dick clarifies, not looking away from Nix who feels pinned down by his gaze. “You don’t have to do that for me, Nix. I can look after myself.”

“I know you can,” Nix says, and he means it. Dick Winters can look after himself in a way not many men can. He’s never really needed a shoulder to lean on or a friend to turn to. Hell, he probably could’ve taken out Adolf all by himself. It’s a fact that makes Nix feel unnecessary and bitter. He’s always needed Dick, that’s something he’s long since stopped trying to deny, but Dick’s never needed him. Not when it really mattered, anyway. “I know,” he says again. “The thing is...” he sighs, and pauses, feeling as though he is about to leap off a great precipice, this time without a parachute to catch him. “The thing is, you don’t have to.”

He closes his eyes. The air is fresh and smells like spring, the breeze cool on his face. Even in the darkness, he can feel Dick beside him, a warm and solid anchor. He opens his eyes. Dick is looking at him, and looking at him, and looking at him.

“Neither do you,” he says softly, so softly Nix can hardly hear him over the beating of his own heart. And then Dick is leaning, he’s leaning in, and Nix suddenly registers how utterly _alone_ they are, and this is really happening, and maybe Dick really does care after all—

“I can’t,” Nix forces out, and jerks away. Dick says nothing. “We can’t, I—I don’t deserve this. Not this, not—”

“What part of this could you possibly _not_ deserve?” Dick asks, and his voice is gentle, heartbreaking. Nix turns away, and falls apart.

“ _You_ ,” he says and it is a small, broken sound, torn out from his heart through his cage of ribs. “Look at you, Dick, you’re perfect, you’re a goddamned _hero_ , and I’m—not. I’m _not_.”

There is silence. Nix wishes that he were anywhere but here. Even Bastogne would be better, in the cold and in the dark, but with his secret locked safe inside of him and Dick oblivious to it all.

There is silence. Nix breathes in time with his own heartbeat, hurried and shuddering and flimsy, flimsy like every promise he’s ever made in his life.

There is silence. And then—

“I love you, Nix,” Dick says, and Nix’s heart stops altogether. “You may not think you deserve it, but it’s too late for that now. I love you, and I need you, and _I_ deserve this. I deserve _us_. We both do.”

Austria is beautiful, Nix thinks distractedly, but it isn’t the countryside he’s looking at. Dick is sitting _right there_ , looking at him, and he’s always been the most beautiful person Nix has ever seen. His heart starts, stops, and starts again, nervous. His palms are sticky with sweat. He doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve any of it—

But he never could lie to himself.

The kiss, when it happens, is not a surprise. There aren’t fireworks, and there’s no piano around for someone to be playing Rachmaninoff. If anything, it’s underwhelming, maybe even a little boring. Dick pulls away and opens his eyes, and Nix gets lost in the blue of them.

“Let’s try that again,” Dick whispers, and this time, oh, this time, it isn’t underwhelming at all.

 

 

 

 

It’s a funny thing, Nix thinks, for men to wear their names like another combat star beneath their jump wings. Like a jumble of letters on a page is something to wear with pride. The name Nix wears is not something he is proud of, and not something he would ever want to show off—

But in the morning, with the sun peeking into their bedroom behind Austrian clouds, and Dick’s sleepy, soft mumble of “ _Nix_ ” against the silky white pillow, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, his name isn’t so bad after all. It’s nothing compared to the gentle consonants and swooping vowels of _Winters_ , for example, but it’s a start. And really, that’s all Nix has ever asked for.

A _start_.


End file.
